A Brief Conversation with Ryan Lochte, Fashion Critic

Last night, while avoiding the chaos known as Fashion's Night Out, we headed to the Ainsworth — a giant sports bar owned by Brian Mazza and Matt Shendell that just expanded to the East Side of Manhattan (where we were) and Las Vegas. At the bar, the guys from Windsor Custom, a bespoke tailoring line under the same ownership, weren't hawking clothes; they were hanging out with Olympic gold medalist Ryan Lochte, a man who has been all over Fashion Week thus far and has serious ambitions about starting his own clothing line. In between ordering Vodka Sprites, his favorite drink, and hugging fans who had tweeted their way into the party, the swimmer explained his design philosophy to us. Excerpts, plus an explanation of what happened with Prince Harry in Las Vegas, below:

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Esquire.com: It must be crazy with all these fans now.Ryan Lochte: It is. It's awesome. It just goes to show how much people were actually into, like, swimming at the Olympics. I got a glimpse of it in London. But I love the fans, that's why I'm here where I'm at.

ESQ: How interested are you in the fashion aspect of all this?

RL: It's definitely one of my passions: What I really want to do is have my own clothing line, my own men's apparel and accessories.

ESQ: What kind of stuff would that be?

RL: I want my clothing line to correlate with my personality. 'Cuz of swimming, I had that clean-cut, clean, driven look. And then I have that wild side where I do like to go out and have fun. I do like skateboarding, crazy sneakers, so I want that clean look, but with an edge.

ESQ: You wear a lot of suits lately.

RL: Yeah I do. Especially when I go out to big events and nice dinners, I'll wear a casual suit.

ESQ: I see you like to accessorize.

RL: I designed this watch. I designed this necklace.

ESQ: What's the necklace made out of?

RL: Uh, black diamonds. And this is a Breitling. I customized it with, I think it's 46.2 carats. It was expensive. But I did this after I won in 2011 at the World Championships. So I treated myself.

ESQ: What about designing shoes and other accessories?

RL: Definitely shoes. I have over, like, 200 pairs of shoes. It's just lines of shoes going left-right-left-right [in my closet]. And I'm working on a new shoe, with one of my sponsors: Speedo. So that's where I designed < target="_blank">my green one, and I'm coming out with another one.

ESQ: I saw you at the Joseph Abboud show. What do you think of the clothes coming down the runway?

RL: There's some bright. At the same time, there's like clean, like black. Like with a hoodie. Stuff like that. I saw different things where I could put it on something and like change it. So taking things from each outfit that I saw and try to create it in my mind of, like, my dream jacket.

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ESQ: What would your dream jacket look like?

RL: Definitely something out of the ordinary. I want to have a jacket where, you know, it has a detachable hoodie. If you want, you can go to the club, put the hoodie up. Go to a concert and have fun with it. Or you can take the hood part off and go to a nice restaurant but still be, like, "damn, look at that jacket." Just doing different everything with different buttons, different lapels, zipper pockets, stuff like that.

ESQ: You filmed 30 Rock today, right?

RL: This morning. It was so much fun. Alec Baldwin is so funny. He just makes the whole set feel at ease. I had lines. So I just had to know my lines, know what to do, know how my facial expressions should've been. It is stressful. After the first two takes, I picked it up and was just like, "keep it going."

ESQ: Were you in Las Vegas right before this?

RL: I went back home for a day so I can could clothes and get ready for fashion week. I just went in my closet and started picking stuff out for fashion week. Because in Vegas, basically I'm just going to a pool party and a club. And a club [look] is not what I would wear to a fashion event.

ESQ: And the pool party: Was that when you saw Prince Harry?

RL: It was so much fun. He's such a nice guy. He found out that I was at the same pool party so his people came over and said, "Hey, Prince Harry wants to meet you." So I went over there and I talked to him for about ten to fifteen minutes, and right when I was about to leave, he's like, "Hey, you wanna race me in the pool?" And I was like, "Aw, Hell yeah." We just jumped in with our clothes on. And we just raced. We hung out in the pool and we had good laughs and I was like, "All right, buddy, it was so nice meeting you. I'm going to head over back to my table with my friends." And then we went our separate ways.

ESQ: Who won?

RL: C'mon! I better have won. But he actually had some good technique. I was surprised. I was like, "Damn, this guy can actually swim."

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